Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms

Description

The New Labour government has placed great emphasis on service delivery. It has provided performance information in the form of Annual Reports, Public Service Agreements, Performance Assessment Frameworks, and a host of other targets. But has New Labour delivered on its welfare reform? This work examines the New Labour government's welfare policies to the end of its first term. It moves beyond a descriptive account to provide an evaluative perspective on New Labour's welfare reforms. "Evaluating New Labour's Welfare Reforms": provides a detailed and comprehensive examination of the welfare reforms of New Labour's first term; compares achievements with stated aims; examines success in the wider context; and contributes to the debate on the problems of evaluating social policy. It is aimed at academics and students of social policy and pr ovides important information for academics and students in a wide range of areas such as politics, sociology, public policy, public administration and public management interested in welfare reform and policy evaluation.

Martin Powell is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath. His edited text on 'New Labour, New Welfare State?' (Policy Press, 1999) is one of the best known accounts of recent social policy reforms.

"... an important contribution to understanding the successes and failures of welfare policies during Labour's first term in office. Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms brings together evidence from a wide range of sources." Tania Burchardt, London School of Economics and Political Science